


Photographs

by cytheriafalas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by my Harry Potter reread where Hagrid says, "Sent owls off ter all yer parents' old school friends, askin' fer photos" because James really doesn't have that many school friends left. Remus gets Hagrid's letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photographs

Remus didn’t even know how the owl found him this far north. It looked rumpled and disgruntled at having to fly this far from anything warm and comfortable. This room was barely large enough for him to lay down in, a rumpled pile of blankets serving as his bed. The few possessions that traveled with him were piled in corners and took up the rest of the space. The only heating he had came when he bothered to cast the spell for it and even then it wasn’t much.

The owl blinked its dark eyes languidly and thrust its leg out. Remus stared at the owl in confusion before he managed to sit up. The mornings after the full moon were always difficult and he often looked back with some fondness on his school days when Madam Pomfrey had been there to patch him up after transformations. The owl uttered an irritable hoot and ruffled its feathers.

Obligingly, Remus uncurled the rest of the way from the floor and retrieved the letter. It had been scrawled on a weatherbeaten scrap of parchment.  


_Dunno if this’ll find you, but I want to give Harry some pictures of his parents. Have any to spare?  
Hope yer doin well,  
Hagrid_

  
The spike of pain through his chest was not wholly unexpected, but it did take his breath away for a few seconds. Of course. It would be Harry’s first year at Hogwarts. He’d known that in the furthest corner of his mind, the part that still keened with pain at the loss of James and Lily and Peter and even Sirius, the one he’d known in school before the war.

Gathering a robe about himself, Remus rose from the floor. He noticed some dried blood on the back of one calf and paused to confirm that it was his. The gash beneath it was enough to convince him he hadn’t hurt someone else, not that there was anyone for dozens of miles around. He headed to one of the piles in the back corner.

He’d been the only one around—the last survivor—to receive Sirius’s possessions, the ones not seized by the Ministry of Magic to pay for repairs following the war. There hadn’t been much left but for a few of Sirius’s clothes, a ring he’d worn every day Remus knew him—that one was too painful to look at, so it stayed folded in a pair of socks that Remus thought had once been James’s and Sirius had appropriated for himself, as he tended to do—and album upon album of photographs. Lily had put them all together for Sirius’s birthday. She’d been pregnant with Harry at the time and had “needed something to do with her hands.”

Remus himself had very little by way of possessions, but he brought the photo albums and Sirius’s stuff with him wherever he went. He couldn’t bear to let them vanish, tossed out by a landlord who claimed to be fine with Remus’s condition right up until the moment another potential tenant showed interest in whatever hovel Remus had managed to secure.

He pulled one of the albums into his lap. It was marked “Book 4 of 6” in Lily’s familiar, precise, looping script. His hand hovered over the cover. It had been so long he didn’t even remember what was in this one, but he didn’t open it. Instead he added it back to the pile and bound them together, all eight despite Lily’s careful note, casting a quick spell to lighten the load.

Rummaging about he managed to find a dying Muggle pen and wrote, “Take what you need, send the rest back—RL”. The owl took both the package and the note and flew off, south and west toward Hogwarts.

Remus lay back down, pulling his cloak over himself. One of Sirius’s old robes and his own arm served as a pillow for today. He fell asleep wondering what Harry looked like now and dreamt of a summer vacation that never happened, one with a grown-up Harry, James, Lily, Peter, and even Sirius. Like all his dreams, it faded to magical explosions and screams and Sirius’s broken voice screaming, “They’re dead. They’re dead. How could you?”


End file.
